CHAPTER IXTHE FAREWELL
The next day everything passed off as arranged. Isabelle Orlandi and Jean Berlier took Alice Dulaurens to the park, as far as the oakwood where Marcel had been instructed to wait for her. At the bend of the path they left them face to face, while they continued their walk under the trees, glorious in their autumn dress.
The terrified Alice put her hand on her heart. Her first thought was to fly, but her legs were weak and her breath was gone.
“Stay, do stay,” said Marcel in a grave, pleading voice, which she did not know. “Forgive my boldness. I am going away to Algiers and I wasn’t brave enough to leave without seeing you once again.”
“Ah,” she said, pale and trembling. “What will my mother say?”
Her mother was only her second thought, but he imagined it her first and frowned jealously. However, he went on with the same tender assurance.
“Alice, I have come to tell you that I love you. Paule told me thatyou loved me. Is it true? I want to hear it from your own lips.”
He saw her tremble and put her two hands to her throat as if she were choking. Her cheeks were colorless and her eyes looked down unseeing on the dead leaves which strewed the path. The oak-branches swayed in the wind with a mournful clash. A pink glow in the sky, appearing through the straight columns of the ancient trees, announced the end of the day.
Her voice was like an infinitely tender plaint as she murmured, “I cannot tell you.”
It was her avowal, the only one she thought permissible.
Touched to the heart, Marcel looked with new eyes on this frightened child, who, only a few feet away from him, a white shawl round her shoulders, stood out like a ghost under the dome of trees. Her long lashes drooped over her blue eyes. Behind her through the branches he saw the setting sun like a huge conflagration, the dark trunks of the oak-trees outlined against it. And the shades of the leaves were glowing and sinister, like gold and blood.
“Alice,” he said again, “if you love me as I love you, promise you will be my wife.”
At last she looked up in the young man’s proud face and understood How much he had gone through for her, and her eyes were wet.
“I cannot ... Marcel ... My parents....” he could say no more—her tears spoke for her. He came nearer and took her hand. She did not draw it away.
In a firm, compelling voice he continued:
“Don’t be unhappy, Alice. You will gain their consent. Be brave and strong enough to wait; time will help us. I only ask you to be patient. I shall do great things for you. I am setting out on an expedition to Africa. I shall win you, my beloved.”
In alarm she begged him not to go, her fears betraying her love.
“No, no, I won’t let you, I won’t let you risk your life. Ah, if you—loved me, you would not go.”
“I am going because I love you, Alice.”
“You don’t know me,” she cried. “I am afraid—I am afraid of everything. I am a poor little wretch. Oh, my head is so heavy!”
She laid her free hand first on her forehead and then on her bosom.
“My heart is so heavy,” she murmured in a low voice.
“Alice,” he said passionately, “don’t be afraid. I love you, I will protect you.”
And bending down he touched with his lips the little trembling hand that he had kept in his own. His kiss thrilled her. She sighed.
“Let us go back. This is not right.”
“Not right when I love you so much? Am I not your betrothed?”
“It is not right,” she repeated.
They looked at each other closely.
The evening sky was fading. A blue mist quivered over the park, under the trees and across the lawns. It was the hour of mystery, when everything is saddened by the fear of death. Daylight still lingered, but a delicate, wasted daylight, languorous in its grace. And the path which disappeared into the wood became in turn violet and rose-color.
In the young girl’s eyes he saw the reflection of the setting sun. All the melancholy of dying nature was held in this living mirror.
Never had he felt so clearly the weakness of his loved one. Never had she felt the chaste desire to cling to his strength as she did now. And yet, as he drew her to him and bent to kiss her, she gently pushed him away and whispered for the third time, “Oh, no, it is not right.” This trembling chastity, which disguised her affection so little, filled him with a feeling of deep respect.
“Alice,” he said again, “you must swear you will be my wife.”
But she answered as she had answered before:
“I cannot do it. It is my parents’ wish....”
Astonished at being unable to get more out of the interview which he had so ardently desired, and which meant so much for their future, Marcel went on firmly, certain of her love and confident that he could convince her:
“Alice, Alice, I am going away—perhaps for several years. But what are two or three years when one loves? If you love, it is forever. I want to take your promise away with me. It will be my safeguard and my strength. Alice, I love you more than my life. Or rather I should say that I cannot live without you—obstacles are nothing when you love. Swear that you will keep your heart for me, when I am gone, and this little hand that you have given me, which lies so icy-cold in mine.”
She stood speechless and confused before him. Her life had passed without initiative. She did not know if she had any will. Even her love had taken possession of her imperceptibly and hurt her by its violence, for it seemed to her excessive and forbidden.
With infinite compassion he looked at her, so pale and weak, his only thought to protect her against the attacks of fate. But as she still kept silence, he became insistent:
“Alice, I love you. The day is ending, you must go home. This autumn air is cold. Will you let me go without a word, without a grain ofhope?”
It was the thrilling hour when all nature gathers herself together before mingling with the shadows, before sinking into death. The last rays of the setting sun still lit up Alice’s pure face and golden hair. And her white shawl made a light spot among the trees.
She still stood silent and motionless. She foresaw both the impossibility of the struggle with her mother and the equal impossibility of marriage with M. de Marthenay. She did not know how much we can shape our destiny when we dare to grasp it with a firm hand. Love was opening all the great gateways of life to her, and she was terrified. What had she done to God that her choice should depend on herself alone? Why could she not follow a smooth and easy path? Thus paralysed with fear she could make no choice.
Why did he not talk about his grief? She was so agitated that she would have been moved to pity and would have given her promise. If he had tried to draw her to him as he had already done, she would not have refused him. She would at last have laid her head on his brave heart.
But he wanted her as a free gift. He waited and as this wait was prolonged he looked more and more pityingly at the poor child whose love was so wavering. Neither shame, nor shyness, nor natural reservecould explain her silence. Their case was too grave that she should hesitate to speak out if she wished to. The obstacles which separated them were only the barriers of vanity and selfishness, not difficult to overcome. She loved, but still she said nothing. He recognised that their paths were not the same. He drew himself up to his full height in disdainful pity. He was able, however, to master his pride sufficiently to say gently to her:
“No, Alice, don’t promise me anything. I give you back the word that you gave Paule for me. You haven’t the strength to love.”
In a firm, even voice he added, as he let her little, cold, unresisting hand fall:
“Good-bye, Mademoiselle Dulaurens, we shall never meet again.”
She saw him disappear down the path where the shadows of the dying day were beginning to fade. He did not turn back. He was already out of sight and yet she still looked after him. The woods were quivering in the evening breeze.
A leaf fell from a tree and in its flight it touched Alice’s hair. At this foreboding of winter she felt death round her—within her.
Like two gay dancing phantoms Isabelle and Jean appeared under the oaks. They found her rooted to the spot where Marcel had left her.When they were about to speak to her, she fled without a word and ran towards the house to hide her misery. It did not occur to her to tell her trouble to Jean Berlier, who could still have saved her from disaster. She reached her room, hid her face in her hands, and wept. But even in her grief she did not think of struggling and gave herself up to the fate that she felt to be inevitable.
After Alice’s flight, Isabelle and Jean looked at each other astonished. “I don’t understand it,” he cried. “I understand quite well,” answered she. “Here’s another who is afraid. We are all alike nowadays. We want money and no risks. I know only one girl who would go to the ends of the world for love, in a dress that cost twopence.”
“Who is that?”
“Paule Guibert.”
Before the words had passed her lips he had suddenly seen a vision of Paule in her mourning dress. Isabelle felt instinctively what was passing in his mind. Jealously she came nearer and in her most seductive voice said:
“What about my commission? Have you forgotten it?”
She offered her lips. He remembered, and as the colors of the dying day mingled he gave her the promised commission under the trees.
Marcel never looked back till he arrived at the ascent to Le Maupas. There he turned round and saw La Chênaie lying in the shadow, while the mountains were still splendid in the light. A long, fleecy cloud trailed half way up their sides like a torn scarf. From the dying sun they caught a tint of rose so fine and delicate that it brought to the mind’s eye a goddess of the Alps half hidden amid gauze and muslin.
He gave himself the cruel satisfaction of waiting till the shadows, falling on the mountain tops, had destroyed this airy fantasy and blotted out these delicate colors. In the sadness of surrounding nature he seemed to breathe more freely. Quickly he crossed the half-stripped wood, through whose trunks patches of fiery red sky could be seen. Round him the owls, those sinister birds of night and autumn, began to call to each other with their mournful screams, like the agonising shrieks of victims, which strike terror into the hearts of belated travellers.
He found his sister at the gate. Feeling anxious about him, she had come to meet him. Paule knew at a glance the result of the interview.
“Oh,” was all she said.
In a word he told her.
“We are not of the same race,” he said.
She took his arm and was bending forward to kiss him when she stopped.
“Listen,” she said.
“Owls! The wood is full of them, Marcel. Let us go away. They make me shudder. The peasants say they are a sign of death.”
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently.